Bobby Jindal on Corporations

Republican Governor; previously Representative (LA-1)

We all want to get rid of death tax & reduce power of IRS

I want to get rid of the corporate tax. Make the CEOs pay the same rates as everybody else. Get rid of all the corporate welfare as well. I think you will find a lot of agreement among Republicans. We all want to get rid of the death tax, the marriage
penalty. We all want lower, fewer brackets. We want to downsize, take away power from the IRS. What we really need to be talking about is these last seven years, we've had more government spending, more government dependence.

Get rid of both corporate tax and corporate welfare

Q: Cutting corporate taxes is very popular in your party because our rate, at 35%, is one of the highest in the world. But nobody has figured out how to identify a set of
loopholes that would allow that tax rate to be lowered. So can you tell us specifically what loopholes you'd do away with?

JINDAL: I'd get rid of the corporate tax. We do have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. I'd get rid of it. I'd get rid of all the corporate welfare.
Make the CEOs pay their same tax rates the way the rest of us do. Get rid of the corporate tax, bring those jobs and investment here to the United States, stop sending jobs and investment overseas.

Eliminated burdensome business taxes

We have overhauled our ethics laws, revamped workforce development programs, and eliminated burdensome business taxes. Every challenge we have taken on has been about making Louisiana the best place in the world to find a job and raise a family.
Our work is starting to pay off.

Louisiana has some of the toughest ethics laws in the nation that show who you know is no longer more important than what you know when it comes to doing business in our state.

Louisiana now has the number one workforce-training program in the country.

Louisiana--a state that once lagged behind in business climate rankings--now ranks in the top ten of three major national business climate rankings.

Louisiana is one of only a handful of states that have more jobs now than at the beginning of the recession.

Per-capita personal income in Louisiana has increased by more than $3,600 over the last five years.

We paid companies, via loopholes, to not pay corporate tax

As it stands today, we have over 460 loopholes on the books that make our system complex, volatile and unfair. Under the current system, if you have a lobbyist and lawyer, you have a loophole.

Let me put that a different way. In 2011, we actually went
in the hole on corporate income tax by some $76 million. In other words, we actually paid companies through loopholes to not pay corporate income tax.

Think about that--we sent more taxpayer dollars to corporations than they paid in income taxes to the state. At the same time, the average Louisiana family of four paid nearly $2,600 in taxes.

In other words, we actually took money from families and used it to pay companies to not pay corporate income tax. That goes to show you our tax system is unfair and riddled with loopholes and exemptions.

Voted YES on allowing stockholder voting on executive compensation.

To amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to provide shareholders with an advisory vote on executive compensation [and as part of that process, fully disclosing executive compensation].

Proponents support voting YES because:

We should not deprive the public, the stockholders, from being able to do anything meaningful once they find out about scandalous levels of executive compensation or board compensation. Everyone talks about the corporate board as the remedy. But the board is often a part of the problem, being paid huge amounts of money for showing up once or twice a year at meetings.

Give the stockholders a meaningful remedy. Once you get the mandatory disclosure put in place by previous legislation, we are saying the stockholders should be allowed to have a referendum on that and not have a runaround by the board.

Opponents support voting NO because:

This vote is based on mischaracterization--it is an unnecessary amendment. The opportunity for these kinds of votes already exists within the structure of corporate governance right now. A good company from Georgia, AFLAC, went ahead and already has these nonbinding shareholder votes. But there is a difference between having individuals in the private sector, shareholders and individuals outside of the mandating of government to have it occur and have government come in with its heavy hand and say, this is exactly what you need to do because we know best. Our constituents know better how to act and how to relate to corporations than Washington.